The CodeBetter Hillbilly, or "How to build a better banjo"

The Coding Hillbilly has been called up to the Show! Seems the members of CodeBetter are serious about the "alternative" part of ALT.NET and thus, I have myself a new home. And hoo-ee, wouldja lookit the size o’ this place! A little less rustic than I’m used to but I believe me ‘n my banjo, Flo’ll do just fine, thanky-kindly.

If I may break character for a moment, I am officially Kyle Baley, a software developer going by the name Coding Hillbilly for reasons I swear are less interesting than you probably imagine (hint: I’m not really a hillbilly). I am some ten years into my career after abandoning a very brief initial stint as an actuary because frankly, those guys are just way too geeky. Although I’m interested in, and have dabbled with many things of late, my current love affairs in the industry include TDD and DDD and the surrounding tools and techniques. But I’ve been known to enjoy some cheap one-night-stands with the likes of Livelink or RPG on occasion. Born and raised in western Canada, I am currently living in the Bahamas where I suspect the next CodeBetter annual meeting will be held.

Speaking of my new roomies, many thanks to them for inviting me to infiltrate. I will do my best to do them proud but with my assumed nom de guerre, I make no guarantees. Those of you getting your first hit of the Hillbilly can find my blogging life to date over at http://kyle.baley.org. I’ll be seeding this with a couple of posts from the tail end of my run there for the sake of continuity. Potential stalkers can also get more personal insight at http://kyle.baley.org/personal and http://www.baley.org which will remain active, albeit sparsely.

So again, thanks to the ‘Better guys for their leap of faith. Time to go back to posting on squirrel huntin’ and family trees/graphs.

Regarding a licensing strategy, consider third-party licensing technologies that allow the balance between copy protection and casual sharing to promote word-of-mouth marketing. Piracy is a huge problem worldwide for publishers and device-based software authentication is currently the best approach as it locks the user’s machine to the authorization to confirm identity.

Complement this with the ability to audit piracy on a global basis using technology from a company such Uniloc which pushes a product called SoftAnchor. Uniloc also allows you to use the piracy data, graphically defined by region (country, continent, etc.) and throttle the licensing parameters to adjust for areas of aggressive piracy. This also allows the loosening of licensing restrictions in areas of lower piracy to promote viral product marketing and greater sales.

There are a few good solutions with SoftAnchor that strike that balance between polite copy protection and viral awareness. It has global piracy auditing, license auditing and device-based authentication and is one of the solutions to put on the short list – we use it here. I would also recommend a solution that makes it possible to implement and maintain secure, embedded product activation in-house. You definitely want embedded seamless security that provides unlimited tripwires and validation checkpoints.

Hope that helps,

Gerry Dufficy

Kyle Baley

@Paul: Only thing that comes to mind is: make it free

Paul Harris

I am a software developer at a small firm in the process of developing an effective licensing strategy that promotes viral adoption, but limits excessive piracy. Any thoughts on solutions or strategies in this area?

http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller Jeremy D. Miller

Glad to have you aboard Kyle. I don’t know what this says about CodeBetter having two different redneck themed blog names though.

Brendan Tompkins

I can tell this is gonna be good!! Welcome!

http://coidebetter.com/blogs/gregyoung Greg

Welcome!

My personal favorite redneck coder joke:

You have firsthand experience with the dangers of multiple inheritance.

Runner up:

You have ever used the words “polymorphic” and “coondog” in the same sentence.